


Breathe in. Good. Now hold it until you weep.

by uarejeff



Category: Batwoman (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Child Kate Kane, Gen, Takes place directly before and after the crash, this was part of a fic that ill probably never finish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25158064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uarejeff/pseuds/uarejeff
Summary: Blood drips into her eyes. Her throat is raw from screaming. Beneath her feet, the broken glass shines.
Relationships: Beth Kane | Alice & Kate Kane
Kudos: 12





	Breathe in. Good. Now hold it until you weep.

Kate is spinning in Bruce’s chair, grinning widely as she twists around and around and around. The leather is old and cracked, and it creaks whenever Kate shifts, but it’s the sort of chair that Kate wants if she ever gets an office of her own. She slows herself to a halt, toes barely brushing the wood-panelled floor, her hands holding onto the edge of Bruce’s giant, messy desk. Her vision turns sickeningly, and she attempts to stand only to laugh as she crumbles back into the chair. 

She eyes Beth, whose kneeling in front of the bookshelves that span both walls, dark wood heavy with darker volumes and odd little knick knacks that always seem to shine just a little too brightly. Beth’s fingertips gently run along the books’ worn spines, mouth moving silent as she mouths the titles to herself. 

Kate spins herself in the chair again, slower this time, watching as the large windows, as the city, fill her vision and then disappear again, being replaced with Bruce’s office and, of course, Beth. Always Beth. Large, hulking, grey buildings, smog filling the air, streets loud and chaotic and restless. Bruce says the city is dying, but how can it when Beth smiles at a word printed in gold lettering that she can’t pronounce? How can a city be so angry when the afternoon light turns Beth’s eyes into something bright, something beautiful?

“Are you nervous?” Kate asks offhandedly, pretending to inspect her nails. Around them, the quiet of Bruce’s office is only broken by the sound of their breathing. 

Beth looks up from the books to Kate. She inhales once, twice, as if considering her words carefully. “A little,” she admits. “But being an adult isn’t that bad, right?”

Kate brings her feet up from the floor and tucks them underneath her. She picks at the leather armrests and frowns. “Yeah, but adults are supposed to be all mature and everything.”

“It’ll be alright,” Beth says softly. “We have each other.” Kate smiles at her, wide and brilliant, and thinking back to this time makes her heart ache for when her cheeks didn’t hurt from grinning. “And anyways,” Beth continues, trying and failing to hide a smirk. “I don’t think you could ever be mature.” Beth laughs when Kate sticks her tongue out as a response, and the tension breaks. The office is filled with noise again; the honking of horns, the murmur of voices, noise that almost drowns out their breaths. Almost.

Kate hops up from the chair and stretches her arms out, relishing in Beth’s wince when her back pops. “Do you think the security guard has any licorice left?” she says, and both twins wander out of the office into the carefully organized conglomerate of offices and rooms that make up Wayne Tower in search of the nice security guard who gives them candy.

Their arms are linked. Beth’s brown hair brushes Kate’s shoulder and, later, Kate wants to know if there was a way to predict what had happened, what was going to happen. Maybe if she had stared at the city a little longer, maybe if she had focused less on her stomach and more on the eight million hungry souls below her she could have prevented the crash. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter because four days later, Kate is standing on the edge of a bridge. Broken glass crunches under her feet, the crushes guardrail creaks, and her throat is raw from screaming. Smoke and debris and blood and little pieces of glass that catch the sunlight and reflect it, breaking Kate’s world into something that is shatter, something refracted, something dirty and broken.

An ambulance a few blocks away wails. She can’t see the car anymore, she hasn’t been able to for a while. The rushing water swallowed any last trace of her mom and, of course, Beth, and Kate half thinks of jumping into the river after them (her), swimming down and down until she’s mixing with the weeds and the trash and the silty water. She sways. She nearly falls, but the ambulance grows louder, and a hand on her shoulder pulls her away from the edge. She peers into the face of a police officer, sunburnt and ruddy faced and sweaty. His mouth is moving but Kate can’t quite register the words, and everything is too bright, too loud, too numb.

Blood drips into her eyes. Her throat is raw from screaming. Beneath her feet, the broken glass shines. 

  
  


Kate’s hair is still damp from the shower, but her skin still feels like it's covered in a layer of ash. She’s cleaned underneath her nails twice but she can’t seem to scrub away the soot. Overhead, the kitchen table light flickers once, twice, but her father sitting across from her doesn’t twitch.

She wants to say,  _ “They’re not dead.” _

She wants to say,  _ “We’re going to see them again.” _

She doesn’t say anything. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth and her teeth ache (when she slammed them together) and her head hurts (concussion), her neck is sore (whiplash), and there’s spots of blood on the bandages that cover her hands (glass). 

Her father stares off into space, face blank, not looking at Kate with her clean/dirty skin and gashed forehead and hands. The darkness from outside the windows seems to expand until it’s filling their house, seeping into the walls and drowning out the light until everything languishes in black.

The back of his car is still packed with presents. On the stove, what was supposed to be dinner lays forgotten and the fridge holds the cake that they’re never going to eat.

Kate wants to say, _ “Dad, I’m scared.” _

Kate wants to say,  _ “Dad, please look at me.” _

Jacob’s eye twitches. His fingers curl until they’re pressed into his palms. Neither of them speak and both of them have to remind themselves to keep breathing.

That night, Kate sleeps on the couch clinging to the landline, waiting for Beth to call. The phone doesn’t ring, the couch is uncomfortable, and for the first time in her life, when Kate wakes up from a nightmare, she is completely and totally alone. 

  
  
Kate walks along the riverbed, feet sinking into the mud, pant cuffs laden with wet sand. She is thirteen years, one month and four days old. She runs her hand over her buzzed hair, still too short for her face, but the lightness of her head has grown on her.

Of course, she cut it in the first place because she couldn’t stand looking into the mirror and only seeing Beth.

Before the crash, people had asked if it had bothered her, having the same face, the same voice, the same smile as someone else. Always the same, never differing. It hadn’t ever then (“Why should it?” she would say. “We’re not the same person.”) but it did now. To look into her own eyes and see only Beth ached in a way that was new, that was unfamiliar, that prompted her to shave off her hair until she was surrounded by drifting brown ringlets, until she only saw her own sad, exhausted face staring back at her. 

(She knew, right then, covered in itchy hairs, nicks on her scalp oozing blood from where she wasn’t careful enough, that she’d rather hack away at her own skin than bear looking a ghost in the eye.)

(Her father had taken one look at her, blinked his red-rimmed eyes, and went to get another beer.)

But Kate’s  _ here _ now, holding a map of Gotham River that has been folded so many times the paper is soft, the colors have faded slightly, the red marker she used to  _ x _ places she checked has bled. She’s here, shoes filthy, birds spinning above her, blue sky so bright it hurts to look at. She’s here and Beth’s not, she’s still searching and Beth’s still lost.

She isn’t quite sure what she’d do if she  _ did _ find Beth. She isn’t sure she could face her sister’s corpse, bloated and rotting, but she has to try. She has to try, just in case Beth is still alive, wandering the river bank, dazed and confused. Kate has to try because she knows deep down that Beth isn’t dead. 

(She would  _ feel _ it, if she were. Right?)

But in the end, it doesn’t matter, because Beth’s lost, so Kate searches, always and forever.

Kate walks further along the riverbed, watching for anything that could point to Beth. Scraps of metal from the car. Bits of torn clothing. Anything, everything. She never finds anything, no matter how long she spends sifting through mud, wading through the freezing river. She’ll waste hours rifling through sand that contains nothing but corroded cans until she’s shivering and wrinkled and hopelessly tired.

Then she’ll walk home. She’ll take a shower, maybe. Eat something, maybe. Sleep, maybe. And the next day she’ll start the entire process over again, always.

Overhead, the birds sing so loudly Kate’s ears hurt. She works to pry her shoe from the mud, and keeps an eye on a homeless man, stumbling and drunk and so very, very alone. Kate sighs, scrubs her eyes roughly, and turns to start the long trek home. 

This was always the worst part of her day, when her hands are numb and her feet are aching and she knows for certain that another day will pass without Beth. She pulls her sweatshirt hood up over her head, burying herself in the stained fabric and relishing in the little bit of anonymity it grants her. She’s not the child who lost both her mother and her sister in one fell swoop. She’s not the girl whose father is so shit faced all the time he can barely remember how to piss. She’s not the kid who spends hours searching the river for someone everyone whispers she won’t ever find  _ (how sad, _ they say,  _ that poor child) _ .

She’s no one. She’s faceless. People don’t look at her with pity, they look at her with trepidation. They cross to the other side of the road just to avoid walking next to the filthy hooded girl with too short hair. 

When it first happened, she laid on her bed and sobbed, as if the very air around her was permeated with grief, as if she was some form of bad luck. The second time, it gave her a little rush that would make Linda the Therapist (chosen and paid for by Family Friend Catherine Hamilton who  _ just wants to help) _ frown and tut in that infuriating way of hers. These random citizens walking the street next to Kate were  _ afraid  _ of  _ her. _

It was new. It was odd. It wasn’t quite horrible.

The gross, muddy marshland slowly turned into something sturdier beneath Kate’s feet. The buildings, originally ramshackle and decrepit, were growing bigger, sturdier, greyer. The birds stopped singing as the wail of cars grew louder and louder until Kate’s standing on a busy sidewalk awash with people. Restless, anxious, angry people. She stands there, swaying slightly on her feet, unwilling to go home but unable to bear going back to the River, and she inhales the rancid smell of urine and pollution and sweat and filth.

Bruce says the city is dying, but Kate thinks he’s wrong. The city is already dead.

She sighs, forcing the city air out of her lungs until they’re empty and she forces herself to stay like that as she keeps walking. She counts to thirty before she has to rake in a desperate breath, head spinning, eyes watering. She exhales. Starts over.

Kate makes her way to her house like that, lungs begging for air, mouth firmly clamped shut. If dear old Linda knew she did this, she’d freak, but the burn in Kate’s chest grounds her in a way Linda’s fucking breathing exercises never could. Linda would spew some bullshit about Kate wanting to be closer to Beth in her final moments, and maybe that holds a bit of truth, but Kate’s also sure that it’s not as nuanced as that. 

(Beth had always been the deep one, Kate doesn’t think.)

And then she’s standing outside her house. There’s this pain in her chest that reminds her of when Tommy-fucking-Whitmoore held her underwater until she kneed him in the shin, and when she inhales, sharply and raggedly like she had at the pool, eyes burning from both her unshed tears and the chlorine, she realizes that there’s a key different between Then and Now. Now, she doesn’t appreciate breathing, no matter how much she suffocates.

(Breathe in, Linda would never say. Good. Now hold it until you weep.)


End file.
